Tired tropes and Hollywood stylings don’t do much to diminish a visually strong and entertaining Wukong origin story.
“You must be from the Dang Dynasty”
Whenever I watch a Journey to the West movie I always have to toss up how much of the source material I want to see faithfully adapted, and how much needs to be changed for the sake of the medium. Some films are too accurate, to the detriment of entertainment – as much as like the Shaw Brothers ones, they’re also a tad dull – and others just sort of do whatever they want. Stephen Chow is the king of this, having been involved in four films that wildly deviate from the source material but were great fun to watch.
It’s fitting, maybe, that he shows up as a producer in this, Netflix’s latest adaptation The Monkey King. It’s a retelling of the book’s opening chapters, up until a certain point. In it, Sun Wukong (unnamed throughout) is born from a stone, and shoots lasers into heaven, before hopping down to Flower Fruit Mountain and defeating the Havoc Demon with the staff he’s taken from the South Seas Dragon King. So far so good.
Then things change. He decides to fight 100 demons in order to attract the attention of Heaven, and also wants to attain immortality – something he (vitally) doesn’t learn from Subhuti at the start of his story. His 100th demon is Red Girl (OK, sure) who is terrorising a village. Wukong befriends Lin, a local village girl, who is secretly working for the Dragon King, who is the main villain of this story.
As a version told for a Netflix audience, it’s not too bad. OK so I was fully ready to have a bad time with this film, especially when it basically starts with the narrated line “Meet trouble”. But as it carried on, there was a sense that the writers actually cared, and include enough little details that proclaim this is something of a labour of love. Dragonball Evolution this was not.
This film is a Chinese-American co-production, and while the Chinese influence is strong and highly needed, the movie is very much made for American sensibilities. The biggest Hollywoodism is in the way it has to give Wukong a typical hero’s journey, dulling his incredible abilities and replacing them with the Golden Hoop rod that does a lot of the work for him. It’s fine, if a bit boring. Ignoring the source material and all that, it’s just a sort-of-decent animated fare you’ve seen a dozen times before. It has a forgettable villain, and a whole lot of gibberish explaining why the rod (sorry, stick) is so damn important. The bones of the story are super generic, and this baffling need to have a human character, and a sidekick (two counting the rod) really minimises the majesty and magic of the main character.
But there’s also a lot to like. Wukong’s personality is pretty on point, and Jimmy Yang does a fine job of voicing him, even if it is a tad Ryan Reynolds-y. The action and animation is wonderful, with some creative camera work, choreography and excellent visuals. It looks great, so much so that it makes me wish they’d animated the entire Havoc in Heaven story properly. In terms of energy and liveliness, it reminds me of Overly Sarcastic Production’s recap of the books, arguably one of my favourite internet series. And hell, sometimes the audience-surrogate human character is actually good. Honestly, there’s a lot to love here, if you can get past the samey tropes that have plagued animated films for decades. I won’t bash Hollywood too much for this, because it was 8 years ago that we got Hero is Back, which also suffered from a fair amount of these tropes and even more deviations.
Overall, it suffers whenever it tries to go wide in its appeal. The result is a film that sometimes treats its audience well, providing a fresh take on an old tale without sacrificing what makes the story work. Other times it decides that no one will engage in a movie that doesn’t have a Doctor’s Companion and a clear villain, and decides to suddenly give us the most common denominator for both. But that said, I’d like to see more of this series if they decide to continue. There’s a lot of potential to tell classic Journey stories in this style. Well, there would have been if Monkey hadn’t killed every major demon in that one cool 2D montage.
Verdict: The Monkey King, like its title, can be occasionally dry and unoriginal, but its excellent animation and love for the source material redeems it.
Overall entertainment: A surprising 6.5/10. Actually make it 7/10, I’m in a good mood.
Violence: Gloriously animated 7/10
Sex: 0/10
Stephen Chow shoutouts: 2 at least
Song numbers: 3, for some reason
Favourite moment: Wukong just announcing he is to be called Great Sage, Equal to Heaven. Excellent stuff.
The Monkey King (2023)
English, Mandarin
Director: Anthony Stacchi
Writers: Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, Rita Hsiao
CAST
Jimmy O. Yang – Monkey King
Jolie Hoang-Rappaport – Lin
Bowen Yang – Dragon King
Jo Koy – Benbo
Nan Li – Stick
BD Wong – Buddha
Ron Yuan – Babbo
Hoon Lee – Jade Emperor
Andrew Kishino – King Yama
Jodi Long – Wangmu
The Asian Cinema Critic 